Forgive Me In Advance

Friday, February 09, 2007

Loaning a life

Microcredit aims to alleviate poverty and help world peace

By Jason Chesworth

… Money is power. Money is security. Money is freedom. It’s the difference between living on the slope of a volcano and being safe in the garden of the Hesperides. And there is the continual pleasure of making more of it, which is quite easy if you have plenty to start with. I can turn a million into two million much more easily than a poor woman can turn five pounds into ten, even if she could get the five pounds to begin with. It turns itself, in fact.

– from The Millionairess by G.B. Shaw

From November 12 – 15, 2006, international dignitaries, economists and microfinance providers congregated at the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax bringing, arguably, the most press attention to the cause in the history of microfinance.

Microcredit “poster boy” Muhammad Yunus rode in on what Summit Campaign Director, Sam Daley-Harris, called “a tsunami of positive recognition” in reference to Yunus being jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the Grameen Bank he founded, just weeks prior to the conference.

The excitement surrounding the event was not what you would necessarily expect of a 3-day conference discussing the economics of poverty. The story was covered by all the large media outlets due to the new visibility awarded to Yunus and the microcredit movement after the Nobel Committee’s announcement, even prompting the CBC’s Nancy Wilson to admit in a televised interview with Yunus that she, “hadn’t known anything about microcredit” prior to hearing about the award. To be sure, Nancy Wilson isn’t alone in her latent understanding of the issue, as she is most certainly in the majority in that regard.

What does a Nobel Prize for microfinance and microcredit do for world peace? During one conference Yunus said, “… what the prize has done to us was something very important. Not only (has) it increased the visibility and attention of people around the world and the policy makers around the world, it has established one thing. It is a link between poverty and peace … poverty has been identified as a threat to peace.” And how exactly does microcredit aid in the elimination of poverty? Through “the provision of small loans to very poor people for self-employment or other income-generating activities”, as stated by The Microcredit Summit Campaign that defines the world’s “poorest” as “any of the 1.2 billion who live on less that US$1 a day.”

The basic principle is that, through the lending of a sum of money that is typically less than $200, a woman living in poverty may be afforded the opportunity to take a skill such as sewing, raising livestock etc., and turn it into a profitable enterprise with capital that has not been previously available to her through the traditional banks due to lack of assets.

In other words, because a family living in Bangladesh cannot afford to buy chickens with less than US$1 a day, they are unable to produce eggs to sell for money in order to buy more chickens to sell more eggs … you get the picture. Microcredit makes what was previously impossible, possible.

"Conventional banks look at what has already been acquired by a person," said Yunus, "Grameen looks at the potential that is waiting to be unleashed."

The idea of lending to the very poor based on their lack of collateral has received much criticism during the last 30 years, but proponents of microfinance assure that the system has a repayment rate that reaches past 95% in most cases. Many advocates maintain that the high rate of repayment is due to the fact that most loans are now awarded to women, for the reason that women have proven to be more financially responsible given their dedication to family and community. And community is truly what the microfinance movement is creating.

According to Fund Their Future, a UK-based charity which helps the poor by supporting the work of many microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world, “MFIs organise their members into self selected groups of 5 borrowers. Loans are made to individuals in the group but future loans to any person are dependant upon the performance of the others in the group. So there is enormous peer pressure to repay the loan. Group members often help each other if an individual is having a difficult time. But also most borrowers are immensely proud of what they do and want to make a success of it. For many it is the only way out of poverty.”

With the two new goals announced at the 2006 Summit -- 1) to reach 175 million of the world’s poorest by 2015 and, 2) to achieve having 100 million families move from below US$1 a day -- we can give more than just hope to making the statements of Shaw’s millionairess an idea of the past.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Atop the title of Peter Tertzakian’s book A Thousand Barrels A Secon lays the subheading, ‘The coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world’. Tertzakian begins his 6th chapter, ‘The Next Great Rebalancing Act’, with the sobering statement: “We are approaching another moment in the evolutionary cycle of energy supply and demand where the status quo will be shaken. A break point is coming before the end of this decade.”

If you’ve been subject to a media blackout or perhaps a coma for the past year and a half, you may be surprised to hear that the fossil fuel, oil, is getting harder to produce and deliver, therefore making it more expensive. For those of you who have gotten a whiff of this news already, Tertzakian’s book provides an articulate point of view from within the energy industry that offers few easy answers and many newfound questions.

The title comes from the author’s assertion that “sometime in 2006, mankind’s thirst for oil will have crossed the milestone rate of 86 million barrels per day, which translates into a staggering one thousand barrels a second!” He goes on to put it in simple imagery by saying, “picture an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of oil: we would drain it in about 15 seconds. In one day, we empty close to 5500 such swimming pools.”

Tertzakian is no doomsayer, nor is he in the business of delivering exaggerated claims for dramatic effect. In fact, as Chief Energy Economist for ARC Financial (a private equity firm devoted to investing in energy-based companies), and former geophysicist for the Chevron Corporation, he has a vested interest, both professionally and financially, in addressing energy realities in an era where real energy facts are subject to intense debate.

In a recent interview with S&H.ca, the author stated, “We as consumers don’t consume oil; we consume gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene and heating oil.” In other words, products refined from oil. “You can make these products from any number of fossil carbon sources; oil shale and coal for example. The easiest and best way of making those products is from conventional light sweet crude oil.” When you have the stuff, that is.

If you were to Google the term “Peak Oil” two years ago, it wouldn’t have turned up half as much commentary as it does today. Peak Oil is not a new term by any stretch of the imagination; it is, however, becoming more and more hotly debated as it enters the collective consciousness of not only a heavily energy-addicted society, but one that is also heavily energy-invested.

The theory of Peak Oil, simply put, is the idea that once we hit the halfway mark in pulling oil out of the ground (and oil being a finite resource), the last half gets tougher and more expensive to extract. M. King Hubbert, widely considered to be the pioneer of the Peak Oil movement, was a geophysicist with the Shell Oil Company from 1943 to 1964 and was later the senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976. However, his views and research are largely remembered as a curved line known as the “Hubbert Curve”, which is a contentious bell curve graph that looks like the side view of a mountain. The concept being, once you work your way to the top, the only direction is down. That’s one side of the argument.

As Tertzakian pointed out to S&H.ca, “the fundamental understanding of the Hubbert Curve is to make some estimate of how much oil there is in the ground and how much of that oil has already been produced. So, depending on what source you use and who you talk to, the amount of oil in the ground … is somewhere around 2 ½ trillion barrels, and somewhere between 1 to 1 ½ trillion barrels has been pulled out. Therefore, half of it has been produced. It’s very simplistic, but then you get into the debate: What do we include under this curve? What type of oil are you talking about? Are you talking about light sweet crude? Are you talking about light sweet crude plus heavier grades? Do we throw bitumen like the oil sands in there? Do we throw oil shale and coal and kitchen grease in there?

“As you start getting deeper into the Peak Oil debate, you start transitioning into the Cadman world”, he said, referencing another “soothsayer” of energy, Sir John Cadman, whom Tertzakian explained, “predates Hubbert’s work by 30 years.”

A former chairman of Anglo-Persian (later known as British Petroleum, or, BP), Cadman made the following statement way back in 1927: “The time will eventually come when the world may have to look for a great part of its supplies from secondary and synthetic sources, but he would indeed be an optimist who imagined that -- on the reaching of such a stage -- prices would remain as low as those existing in the past.”

You may vaguely remember the recent fireworks on Parliament Hill regarding Canada’s position on Missile Defense as being a cock-up between a Minority Prime Minister and his newest diplomatic appointee, Ambassador McKenna sent a message to the Bush Administration, via the media, that we’re still in it, and Paul Martin told George W., via backchannel messaging, that he just can’t afford it politically… yet.

Steven Staples, director of the Polaris Institute, authored a report on Frank McKenna when his Ambassadorship was just an official rumor. Staples told S&H.ca in early February that, “The Prime Minister has indicated that the next Ambassador to the United States would play a more direct role in shaping the relationship and would participate, in perhaps more closely informing Canadian Policy and influencing that Policy. Hence, I think on both of those accounts that the Canadian Public does need to look closely at... who Frank McKenna is, where he stands on these issues and what his background is, because he is going to be playing a political role.”

Staples explained that, “traditionally the appointment of the Ambassador to the United States has been more of a diplomatic posting drawing on someone from the diplomatic core - not a political appointment... I don’t necessarily oppose the appointment of a political person there, but it is noteworthy.”

Bernard Etzinger, spokesperson for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, offered another insight for S&H.ca saying, “I would put the appointment of Mr. McKenna in context... yes, Michael Kergin (the outgoing Ambassador), is a career diplomat, but remember that he was Prime Minister Chretien’s Foreign Policy Advisor.” As well Mr. Etzinger recalled the tenure of Raymond Chretien, Chretien’s nephew, as Ambassador to the U.S., invoking the idea that close ties between Ambassador and Commander-in-Chief are standard operating procedure.

Staples understands the business of politics stating, “It’s nothing new that a former politician goes on to earn his fortune in the business sector... but I think in particular, questions began to be raised with his connections to the Carlyle Group. Especially in relationship - when you take note that he’s going to be playing a much more influential role in defining our relationship with the United States - so therefore if he’s on this Carlyle Group, that, to us, raises serious questions.”

If you’ve seen it, you may remember from Fahrenheit 9/11, that Bush Sr., and other members of the Carlyle Group were discussing business with Osama Bin Laden’s brother on the morning of September 11th. According to its website, the Carlyle Group’s “mission is to be the premier global private equity firm, leveraging the insight of Carlyle's team of investment professionals to generate extraordinary returns across a range of investment choices, while maintaining our good name and the good name of our investors.”

In other words, they’re a corporation that buys other corporations, (from Defence to food manufacturing), and because they bring on former Heads of State to “advise” them on the socio-economic-geo-politic issues around the globe, (that they themselves often created); these guys know when to fold ‘em and know when to run. Some consider it tantamount to insider trading at its most cynical; others reckon it’s democracy in its purest form.

Despite claims that McKenna will divest himself of his business interests, Steven Staples qualifies that: “Let’s be clear, he said he was going to withdraw from these Boards... we don’t know what his own personal investments are in terms of these companies... we know that many of the members of the board do have investments within the Carlyle Group of their own personal money.”

Missile Defence has been a source of great wealth and great debate amongst several Administrations on both sides of the border for well over two decades now. As the various players switch from public to private life, issues such as Public Interest and Private Investment are becoming harder to define and separate. It has become painfully clear that as the Canadian Public, we are on a need-to-know basis; and we don’t need to know.

Peacemaker or Terrorist? Since his death on November 11th from causes still unknown, journalists, pundits and experts from both sides of the Iron Wall have been tripping over themselves to canonize, lionize, demonize and eulogize the late leader of the PLO and Noble Peace Prize winner.

But, what lies behind the terms ‘Peace’ or ‘Terror’? S&H.ca met with Abdel Takriti, Campaign Co-ordinator for Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestine Refugees, and asked whether Arafat would be remembered as a Peacemaker or a Terrorist.

Without blinking he replied, “First of all, you have to ask the question: Who is remembering? If you are talking about Palestinian people, of course the question is irrelevant. That version of terrorism is an incitement of the Palestinian population and negates the very idea of Palestinian armed struggle.” Furthermore, Takriti clarified the Western perspective by adding, “There is mass disinformation over here. Everything is judged in these abstract terms that have no actual reference to reality.”

An example of disinformation: CTV Newsnet recently ran a minute-long clip just before a commercial break depicting a “training camp” for Palestinian children. The television showed images of children as young as eight-years-old running through military-type drills with AK-47 rifles. Cut to commercial, and the vast majority of the viewing public is left with the haunting vision of a Freedom-hating, Terror-breeding society. No attempt to pose the question, “Why?” or to frame this reality in any kind of context was made.

In today’s age of rampant disinformation, context not information has become the real power. How can we properly question a situation without understanding the contextual framework that surrounds it? Perhaps this is why terms such as Zionism, Eretz-Israel; names like Theodore Hertzl, Vladimir Jabotinsky and ideological concepts like, “A land without a people for a people without land” are completely left out of our media’s analysis of the current situation.

Takriti, a Masters student of Political Science at York University, lucidly explains the roots of the conflict in his excellent article in The New Socialist Magazine.

He states, “Far from being the incomprehensible matrix that it is often made out to be, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is easy to understand. It is a native-settler conflict quite like many others that have emerged ever since Columbus made his wretched journey to this hemisphere. Its roots lie in nineteenth century Europe where flagrant anti-Semitism led to the development of the Zionist ideology. Zionists argued that Jews were a nation, and that they should create a “national homeland” to which all of them would emigrate. In the 1898 Basel conference they stipulated that this homeland should be established in Palestine. It mattered little for the Zionist leadership that Palestine was already inhabited. To them, Palestinians were nothing but savages that degraded the Promised Land; they were a nuisance that had to be removed.”

Yasser Arafat did not create the conflict that existed before his birth. Neither did Ariel Sharon. Both have been major players in its history and both have led their followers toward goals that, depending on which side of the “security fence” you’re born on, have been viewed with integrity and justification. As evidenced in the recent U.S. assault on Fallujah, one man’s terrorist is another man’s resistance fighter.

But, when the topic of terrorism has reached an impasse, the media turns on Arafat for his financial holdings and private wealth. He has been criticized for maintaining a personal wealth at the expense of his own people with holdings in a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a cell phone company, and venture capital funds in the U.S. and favourite off-shore Capitalist Mecca, The Cayman Islands. Recent reports now confirm that Arafat had invested at least $6.3 million dollars with Citibank through the Palestinian Commercial Services Co., a Ramallah-based company that he controlled.

Before we ask whether Yasser Arafat was a Peacemaker or a Terrorist, we first need to ask the question: “Do we consider Heads of State that commit crimes against Humanity, that withhold vast sums of wealth against the best interests of their people, that engage in illegal means of war, to be terrorists?”

Although the foreign policy of any country must from time to time be adapted to changing circumstances, there are in it continuing threads which represent the ideals, as well as the interests, of a people. A knowledge of past policy is therefore of value not only to scholars who study and interpret Canadian history but also to those who seek a broader understanding than a knowledge of current events can provide.

- Paul Martin Sr., Former Secretary of State for External Affairs

On February 29th 2004, The United States sponsored its third coup d’etat in as many years. With the approval of the international community, democratically elected Haitian president Jean Bertrand-Aristide was removed from office on the premise of restoring democracy and putting an end to government corruption.

Adding to the internal woes of the Haitian people, the country was devastated by Tropical Storm Jeanne in late September leaving an estimated 1,500 dead and another 1,250+ missing and presumed dead. Compare that number to the 6 fatalities in Florida from the very same storm, and you are left with some very difficult questions that do not lead to any hard or fast answers. To be sure, the environmental disaster visited upon a third world country by a single storm cannot be attributed to the policies imposed by foreign nations alone, but the two realities are not mutually exclusive.

Claude Lalande, a retired RCMP corporal who served as part of the Canadian-led UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti in 1995 stated, “The infrastructure was not there for them (the Haitian people) to progress.” Lalande spent six months in the impoverished country recruiting and monitoring the training of a new Haitian Police Force during Aristide’s restoration to power after his first ouster in 1991. “I left Haiti frustrated,” he said, “I was mad. I knew this country would not do well for itself.” Nearly ten years later, the country that Lalande worked so hard to assist has been pushed further into repression and widespread violence.

Writer-Researcher, Anthony Fenton, explained candidly, “‘Keeping the peace’ under the present circumstances means silencing Haiti's majority political party, Family Lavalas, which is also the party of deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Some 25,000 of these people are reportedly targeted for ‘pacification’ or ‘extermination’.”

Canada’s involvement in Haiti has surfaced in the mainstream media in terms of advertising Economic and Foreign aid packages. Fenton puts it in perspective by saying Canadian involvement goes “as far back as the 1950s when Canadian mining companies were exploring to see what was left of Haiti to plunder. By the end of the 1960s, Canada had established a good relationship with the brutal dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier, only to set up formal relations with his equally brutal son, Baby Doc, by 1973.”

Fenton continued: “In the more recent period leading up to Aristide's overthrow, Canadian policy was in lockstep with that of the U.S. to the extent that Canada hosted a January 2003 meeting during which the very UN ‘tutelage’ that is underway in Haiti was discussed.”

Both Fenton and Lalande, each having witnessed the day-to-day Haitian reality firsthand, are sceptical of Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew’s recent statement that he doesn’t see much more to do in terms of additional aid. Lalande chalked it up to “a case of keeping head in sand”. Fenton on the other hand charged that, “Pettigrew will continue to play this game as it unfolds... History will judge them on this if the public is not able to in the present tense. Another reason Pettigrew says such things is due to the impunity that he enjoys; most Canadians haven't a clue as toward what is really happening in Haiti, and are therefore in no position to challenge Pettigrew on such claims.”

Haiti has become a blueprint for Privatization and Policy-based lending. That blueprint can be seen across the globe today in countries that have been forced to accept loans at the expense of decision-making and self-determination. Loans are not only being paid with interest; they are lent with the demand of lowered tariffs and foreign control of natural resources. Haiti is not only the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere it is a brutal reflection of how we treat our poor.

Truth in Iraq

An Interview with Dahr Jamail

Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist who is currently covering the crisis in Iraq. He has spent over six of the past twelve months in Iraq and has served as a correspondent for The Nation, Democracy Now, Z Magazine, and New Standard News. His reports can also be found on his website: www.dahrjamailiraq.com. Jason Chesworth spoke with him by telephone on November 28th, 2004.

Jason Chesworth: Dahr, where are you right now?

Dahr Jamail: Right now I'm in central Baghdad. I'm not too far from the Green Zone area which is the main U.S. control base here in Baghdad.

Iraqis standing around a crater made by an explosion. Dahr Jamail's photography and reporting can be found at his web site.

And what brought you to Iraq?

I primarily came because I saw there was a glaring need in the West for more accurate reporting from the ground in Iraq, rather than just mainstream media reports of what were essentially regurgitated military press releases.

What kind of reception have you received from the Iraqi people?

Well that is really interesting because it's really changed pretty dramatically through my trips. I would go to report on stories, even during my first trip and people would see that we were media and immediately become angry because they had been interviewed, for example by other mainstream media sources and then would see the newscast go out and not have the Iraqi side of the story, and so people have become very reluctant to talk with journalists here. But then, it's necessary to have an interpreter who can explain to them that this is an independent journalist, he will print what you say, he will show your side of the story as well, you can trust me. Once that bridge is made, then people are very open, talk very frankly about things and then of course will receive us and treat us very well and invite us to meals and tea and things like this.

How have you been received by the American military there? Do they know you're there?

I don't know if they know I'm here, I mean, I'm sure if they wanted to they could, but frankly I do my best to avoid them mainly because of security. Because they are targets, there are so many attacks now on a daily basis on the military. In fact, any time a patrol goes down the street when we're driving around Baghdad, we always try to hang back from it, because you just never know when they're going to be attacked. I mean, even right now there's at least 80 attacks per day on the military throughout Iraq, so while I would very much like to interview soldiers more, I've done so in the past when it wasn't quite as dangerous, this trip I've just made it a point to try and avoid them.

Have you been to Fallujah?

I have, not this trip. On my first trip, I went there several times. My last trip was during the April siege of the city and I actually did manage to get inside of the city while fighting was going on and saw some very horrendous things. And then I went back there in May three different times after that siege ended and documented what had occurred inside the city during the fighting and saw, again, horrendous things. This trip I would very much like to go there, but no one is being allowed in the city aside from a few Red Crescent vehicles as of yesterday (Nov. 27th). The military remains in total control of the strict cordon around the city and no one is...no families are being allowed back in for at least two months now the military has said. And other journalists who have attempted to go gain access inside the city have been detained.

What would be the reason for not letting residents of Fallujah back into the city for the next two months?

The primary reason is because the city is completely destroyed. Everyone was well aware that the only way the military would be able to take a city like Fallujah, considering how entrenched the resistance is there, would be if they essentially went house to house and virtually destroyed the city and bombed it to the ground. And that is essentially what has happened. There is no water there, no electricity, there's unexploded ordnance all over the place and one of the primary reasons, beyond those, that the military won't let people back in there for quite some time is because there is ongoing fighting there on a daily basis. While the military does occupy most of the city, they're being attacked everyday in different sections of the city, sometimes very heavily from resistance fighters that are actually infiltrating the cordon to come into the city and continue attacking the military.

What do they feel would change in two months, that would benefit people in two months? Is the choice of letting them back in two months, it seems like a rather arbitrary figure because the city is still going to be flattened...is there a desire to go back, do they want to go back to their city...

Well, it's an extremely arbitrary date and I'm sure it will change one direction or another but, of course people want to go home. People, especially in Iraq, much much more so than in America are very very tied to where they're from and where they live and have much pride in where they live and they very much want to go home. They're very aware of the fact that their homes will most likely be destroyed, but they want to go back. That's where they live, where they're from. Most often, you have generations and generations that have lived in this one area. So, they do want to go back, even if they know they're going to have to rebuild from scratch. Some people still do hold out hope that maybe their house may be one of the few that did remain relatively unscathed and some of their belongings will still be there.

The thing about your dispatches that caught my eye was your coverage of the first siege in April. When we here in the West were told that there was a cease-fire happening, your dispatches reported to the contrary. What were your thoughts when you were reading the reports that there was a cease-fire, yet you knew that there were bombs going off in the city?

Yeah, it was really astounding to me, but at the same time, I guess I've become jaded enough having spent a number of months in Iraq and seeing how the military is operating here. That essentially they use the same tactics that the Israeli military uses in the Occupied Territories. There is so much propaganda and so much rhetoric and so, when I went into Fallujah for example, April 10th, it was during one of these "cease-fires", and as I was driving into the city there were mushroom clouds from bombs dropped by warplanes coming up out of the city and sporadic fighting all around and military drones flying everywhere. So it surprised me, but at the same time I'd seen enough of their denials and their outright lying about some of the tactics they've used in some of the operations they've conducted. To be in there during one of these so-called "cease-fires" and see that it was anything but a cease-fire wasn't so shocking, I guess.

Was it after the first siege in April that they basically evacuated all journalists out of the city?

Actually, that came a bit later. It was very dangerous for Western journalists to back into the city after April. I was very lucky to get in there in May the few times I did, because the resistance fighters didn't keep very strict control on who they'd let into the city because they were afraid that everyone would spy. While there were these so-called "peace-talks" going on between the resistance fighters in the city and one of the demands of the US military was for the people controlling Fallujah to have all journalists inside the city be removed before the siege. That was one of their conditions, because they simply didn't want people in there documenting these atrocities that are being reported by all of the refugees that are coming out.

I want to talk about some of these atrocities that are being reported, because they are very rare to find and you are the most constant source, but definitely not the only source. The new siege on Fallujah was ostensibly to rid it of what they call a "strong-hold" of insurgents. Am I correct in that statement?

Right, that was one of the main reasons, and the other was to create stability for the upcoming elections.

And they've been using their new bogey-man, Al-Zarqawi, saying that he has been leading the rebel forces from within Fallujah, correct?

That's what they said, yes.

Now, there was a press-release which I'm sure you're aware of and I'd like your insight on this.

The only place I've been able to find it was on MSNBC, and they said that members of his army put out a press-release indicating that Al-Zarqawi was in fact dead. They say here in the West that they haven't been able to substantiate that, but what are your thoughts?

It's really... Zarqawi does appear to be some sort of a bogey-man, ABC in fact even reported that he had been killed last March, most Iraqis don't even believe that this person even exists and certainly no-one I've even spoken with in Fallujah at any time, whether I was in there last December, January, April, May or any of the refugees I've spoken with over the last few weeks here in Baghdad have said they know, you know, that this person is in their city. It's been 100% of people not knowing anything about this person operating inside or through Fallujah, so certainly most people on the ground here in Iraq believe he's another U.S. propaganda fabrication much like Osama Bin Laden. Many people feel if he does exist, he's probably working for the CIA so they can pull him out and use him to justify these very heavy handed military operations.

So, we have the American military invading Fallujah, they were softening it up beforehand, and you've mentioned that you've seen some atrocities and you've reported some horrific, horrific events. And what I want to ask you about is, the illegal weapons that they've (American military) been using in Fallujah. Yours haven't been the only reports coming out. Have you heard of white phosphorus fire?

Yes many, many refugees have reported seeing that having been used.

And can you describe what that is?

They reported that they saw... it was a huge kind of bomb that would come down and explode, and then different parts of it would fall from the sky burning, leaving large trails of smoke behind and then the fires, when it would land on the ground would burn for a long, long time and then anyone who touched it would burn, and when attempted [sic] to dump water on them, it would continue to burn, even when they were wet, and it was just impossible to put it out.

Sounds a bit like napalm to me.

Yeah, or that as well, which wouldn't have been...it would have been easy for the refugees to get the two confused, although it wouldn't be surprising if napalm was used as well, because the Pentagon admitted to using that during the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

And what kind of a response do you... do you recall seeing what kind of response the International Community has had to this revelation that they're using illegal weapons?

I've seen...ah, no response from the International Community as far as governments go. Of course, Human Rights Watch and some other NGO's and independent organizations like that have been very, very outspoken about it and I know that lawsuits are being filed, but this is not a new thing. The repeated use of cluster bombs in Sadr City and Fallujah during the April siege and other parts of Iraq where there has been heavy fighting during the occupation has been very common. Of course very heavy-handed military tactics like snipers shooting civilians and deliberately targeting ambulances and things of this nature have also been common. There have been numerous different war crimes committed, but again, International condemnation from other governments just hasn't been there. It's only coming from independent journalists who are reporting this, eye witness accounts and also, organizations like Human Rights Watch.

You've mentioned the use of snipers repeatedly. When people were leaving the town, there was an exodus of refugees leaving Fallujah, even... you talk of people trying to cross the Euphrates river and getting shot at by snipers?

Yes, several different refugees told me, and this was a very common story; it came from people who had left Fallujah at different times, people who lived in different parts of the city. The story that they keep telling is that people were attempting to leave the city--to get away from the fighting to try to seek shelter. Many people tried to do this by swimming across the Euphrates river which goes right by Fallujah. When they did this, even people who were holding white flags, makeshift white flags or white garments over their heads to identify themselves as being not fighters, were shot by US snipers on the other side of the river.

And no discrimination between women, children the elderly or anything like that?

Definitely not, no. Everyone is saying that they just shot anyone that tried to cross the river, because apparently there had been some fighters crossing the river. So, in the end they ended up just shooting everyone and everything, whether it was someone swimming or attempting to use a boat to cross the river.

I realize I might be asking a painfully naive question, but, what could possibly be the reason for doing this?

Well, it's actually been made quite clear by US-appointed Prime Minister Allawi, who has come out and said this is a lesson to any other city in Iraq who supports Iraqi resistance. Essentially we're seeing played out on the ground here, George Bush's aggressive Foreign Policy. A statement he actually made just after the attacks of 9/11 in the U.S. when he said, "we will go after any group that supports"--he calls it Terrorism, in this case in Iraq they are a resistance, that's how everyone here refers to them--"we will go after the resistance themselves and we will go after anyone that supports them". So, we're seeing that now being played out on the ground where people in Fallujah, where so many people have no affiliation whatsoever with the fighters, and yet, we're seeing collective punishment, which actually, is a very, very common practice here in Iraq. Last week, Samara went eight straight days with no electricity and no running water in the entire city, because the resistance is controlling most of the city. And again, we have collective punishment of civilians who have nothing to do with the fighting and they just happen to live in the city. This is what we've seen occur in Fallujah, it's occurring in Ramadi now, in fact, even today two civilians in Ramadi were shot dead by U.S. snipers because they can't get into large parts of the city, so just like in Fallujah in April, they set up perimeters and then station snipers and basically just shoot everything that moves.

And they are doing this to teach them a lesson and soften them up.

Exactly, yeah, that's the rhetoric that's used, "to soften them up", to make the statement that any group who supports the resistance will meet the same fate as the resistance. Of course they call them 'terrorists', but again, that brings another point I want to make; that most people here do refer to the people fighting against the Occupation Forces as the Iraqi Resistance. And they feel that it is their right to resist the occupation that is in their country and attempting to occupy their land. So the military took advantage of this very obvious symbol of the resistance... and of Iraqi pride against the occupation, to drop the "Iron Hammer". In order to do that and to control the city, they've literally had to demolish it. The great irony is now, that they still don't have control of the city, what is left that is... and they've created several other 'Fallujahs', in different cities all around.

And they've actually characterized Fallujah as being a 'training ground' for the military to carry out these operations in other cities, is that correct?

Apparently so, yes, because they are essentially going to have to do something similar, maybe not of that scale, but similar tactics in Mosul, Ramadi, Samara, they're doing it now in the South, in several other smaller cities down there. There are many places around that, they're going to have to implement this house to house street-fighting and going into cities and trying to battle people who are very--you know, this is their home, they know the city very well and the only way... when you bring so much military hardware, there's always going to be mass civilian casualties and there's always going to be mass destruction of the city.

The first way that they approach these cities, the first targets that they take out are the hospitals, correct?

That's correct. The first target was...they actually did fire a couple of rockets even at the hospital, and then they promptly occupied the hospital, detaining doctors, interrupting operations that were in progress, detaining patients and essentially rendering the hospital useless. The main goal of this was to shut down the casualty reports that would be coming. That was a PR disaster for the military in the April siege. The huge casualty counts and the video coming out from inside the city of the civilians and the women and the children ended up causing so much pressure on the U.S. Government, that they had to cease their attempts to take the city then.

So what they did different this time was they just went in and essentially just shut down the hospital so that those reports could not come out, and this is one of the main reasons why we haven't had any up-to-date, really accurate accounts of civilians. And we won't for a long time, because the only aid thus far that has even been allowed in the city is a few Iraqi Red Crescent ambulances as of yesterday, and of course, they were very tightly controlled by the military in just a couple of areas. There are bodies still everywhere in the streets, no one can really know for sure how many have died. The military claims 2000 people died, the vast majority of them fighters, but all of the civilians coming out are saying basically the opposite, that at least 2000 people are dead and the vast majority are civilians.

What has been the response for you when you come back home?

Ah, it's been actually quite good, but the predominant response has been shock. Even people who read a lot of independent reports from Iraq and not just mainstream media, people who do read it closely and read various outlets and feel they are pretty up to speed on what's going on--when I come back and show these photos and tell these stories of what I saw there on the ground, people are always completely shocked. They basically say, "we knew it was really bad, we knew it was a horrible situation, but we didn't know it was that bad." And that's the predominant response that I get and it continues to this day. The fact that my reports and my photos are showing a different story than that which is portrayed in the media...the fact is that this is an absolute debacle, Iraq is completely shattered and most people just struggle here to survive on a daily basis.